Published at 21st of February 2024 11:03 pm

Chapter 17 My Landlord Makes Elixirs

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Elmer had taken a public carriage back to the uncomfortable silence of Tooth and Nails street, but despite his haste, he had briefly checked in on Mabel first before taking himself to the door of apartment eight.

His constant knocks had long faded, but still he stood, waiting tensely with a pounding heart, trembling hands, and eyes constantly darting between the words on the paper he held and the number above the door frame.

How could this be? How could his landlord be an Alchemist?

The door was still not budging. Was he not home? Elmer wondered.

He turned around and glanced about the empty corner he was in, his eyes plowing through the dirty brick walls and the windows of the apartments surrounding him as if he would somehow find his landlord hiding in them.

After a while of restless glances, Elmer whirled back to the door of apartment eight, bit down on his lower lip, and tightened his fist into a knuckle. But just when he was about to give the door a long, hard knock, it creaked and kept his hand stuck in the air.

“Who’s knocking?” a hoarse and tired voice questioned angrily from behind the small slit the door had come to have. “Why can’t a man have his peace?” A brown eye showed itself and cautiously examined Elmer from the ivy cap on his head all the way down to the dirty boots covering his feet.

Elmer retracted his hand and shifted back a step as he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to have bothered your sleep.”

“Never said I was sleeping,” the landlord butted in with an impassive tone. “Peace could be anything. Well, get on with it then? What’d ya want?”

You didn’t give me a chance to talk before… Elmer retorted deep within himself.

He took one last glance at the words on the paper: Tooth and Nails street, Apartment Eight, and up at the number on the door frame. He definitely was at the right place—weirdly.

Or was his landlord a quack? Even if he was, he would take his help regardless.

Elmer brought himself closer to the door with a step and said, “I have come to ask for your help.”

He heard a snort erupt from within the door. “My help? Yer want me to bring ya pies to ya bedroom or wha’? Bugger off, tenant. Do I look like someone who helps people or does ‘em favors?”

Elmer gasped as the door creaked in an attempt to close shut, and he quickly voiced, “You’re an Alchemist, right?” The landlord stopped and eyed Elmer again.

“Wha’d ya say, tenant?” the brown of the man’s eyes instantly grew dark.

Elmer forced a saliva down his throat as his chest tightened. “I asked if you’re an Alchemist. I—”

“Aren’t ya a tenant?” the landlord suddenly whimpered with a shrill voice. “He sent ya, didn’t he? He told ya to spy on me! I knew it! I knew it!”

Elmer was taken aback by the sudden cries of his landlord, but he remembered some ramblings of this same sort from the first time he had come to the man’s doorstep. Now that he thought about it, the man had mentioned elixirs back then. How could he have forgotten?

“Tell him I don’t want to!” the landlord continued, his voice strained with nervousness. “Tell him I’m not doing it anymore, do ya understand me! I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”

The man’s eye suddenly disappeared into the door, and Elmer immediately knew what was coming next. He quickly stuck out his left foot between the door slit and stopped it from slamming shut, but not without pain. And the eye reappeared—with a glint of anxiety.

Elmer clapped his hands together, squeezing the paper beneath them into a rumple. “Please,” he lowered his head and begged. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. No one sent me to spy on you. If you’re really an Alchemist then I need you to make me an elixir. I want to become an Ascender. Please.”

“No!” the landlord shouted, jolting Elmer, but he made sure to keep his foot between the door. “Get ya foot away from my door. Didn’t ya hear what I just said? I don’t want to do it anymore! I’m not making ya any elixir. Get away.”

Elmer kept his head bowed and did not take his foot away from the door. Then suddenly the door smashed against it, continuing in intervals, and with the pain came indistinct rambles from the landlord.

“Please,” Elmer muttered between grit teeth as he rubbed his palms fervently together. “Please. Please. Please.”

“Get away from my door, will ya?!” The man stopped smashing his foot. “Leave!”

“No!” Elmer shot back and took his eyes welling up with tears to the brown eye gazing at him. “I can’t leave. I can’t! You have to help me. I have to become an Ascender. Please! I swear I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’m here of my own will.” He lowered his head again and rubbed his palms together. “Please.”

Silence permeated the air for a while, until the landlord broke it. “No one sent ya?” he asked.

“No one,” Elmer replied, still rubbing his palms against each other. Then he remembered how he had gotten the address and he wondered for a brief moment if he should mention that, but he decided against it. Surely, it would only do him more harm than good.

“Why?” the landlord said, his voice seeming to have forsaken its whimpers and nervousness. “Why’d ya want to become an Ascender?”

Is he going to help…? The question gave Elmer a ray of hope.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He then stopped his palm-rubbing, but still kept his head lowered; although he did not know what to say.

Was he to tell him about Mabel? He hated talking about it. He hated having to say that his sister was with a disability.

Elmer shook his head and gave out a long exhale, freeing his chest from its tightness as he closed his eyes. “I need to help my sister,” he mumbled, clenching his jaw soon after. “I need to help her, and this is the only way.”

“I told ya to dispose of the body, didn’t ya hear me?”

Elmer flared his nose at the landlord's words, but he knew better than to snap at the only person who could currently provide him with the help he needed. He caged his little anger as much as he could and loosened his breathing.

“She’s alive,” Elmer told him, his voice cracking. “She’s just…” he trailed off and could not get himself to continue.

“A shell,” the landlord filled the words in for him, and Elmer raised his eyes, taking it to the eye behind the door. “How do ya intend to give a lifeless shell life, tenant? What are ya plans exactly? Do ya think if ya just drink some elixir ya can gain powers and just magically do it all?” The landlord snorted. “Delusion is what I say. Delusion, delusion. Do not tamper—”

“I’m going to help her!” Elmer cut in with a harsh voice, his eyes cold and flinty. “I’m going to do whatever it takes. She might be a shell now, but as long as she still breathes then I’ll forever keep searching for a way to help her.”

The landlord went mute.

“And…” Elmer said again through pacing breaths, “I have a plan.”

“And what’s that plan?” the landlord questioned.

“The God of Time. I’m going to become an Ascender of his pathway.” Elmer heard a scoff from behind the door, but he carried on regardless. “I was told that to learn about the Ascenders and their pathway I’d have to become one myself, and that is why I have decided to become an Ascender of the time pathway. If the God of this pathway truly oversees the flow of time of this world, then there must be a way, some sort of means that will help me reverse time for my sister and bring her back to who she used to be. That is why I need you to help me become an Ascender.”

Elmer’s fists clenched as he thought of one more thing, and that was the promise he had made to the robed priests and their God who had driven him to this point. He had never really thought of how he would get the power to carry out his revenge on them, but now, once he became an Ascender, he might as well use that power to make them pay for their sins against him—as soon as he had helped Mabel.

“Do ya even know wha’ happens if ya fail to become one?” his landlord asked. “Ya become a—”

“I’m not going to become a monster,” Elmer answered, his neck stiff and his voice hard. “I’m not going to become a Lost. There’s no way I’m going to leave Mabel all alone. I’m the only one she has left.”

The world fell quiet at once, but only for a few seconds before Elmer snapped away from his thoughts as he saw the door of apartment eight open wider than a slit for the first time.

“Come in,” the landlord said. “Yer delusion will be ya death, tenant.”

Elmer’s face brightened, and it was as though the latter words of the landlord had never made it into his ears. “Thank you,” he sang with a sharp bow. “Thank you.”

…

“Watch ya legs,” the landlord warned, freezing Elmer in place as the door shut behind him, and if he hadn’t Elmer would not have noticed the glass vial before his foot. “Let me open the curtains.”

Good. The room was too dark, and there was some sort of musty smell about it which made Elmer’s nose twitch, one he felt was from herbs and chemicals.

With a swish, light poured into the room, almost worsening Elmer’s eye problem as it forced him to instinctively spread out a hand over his face for a moment.

When his eyes adjusted once again, this time from darkness to light, he allowed himself to gaze about the room which amazed him to be quite spacious.

The rug-covered floor looked as though it had not been taken care of in months. Along with dirt, it was littered with rumpled papers and takeaway cans and paper bags, and most of all: glass vials.

Below the window stood a small rusty stove, and close to it a cauldron of a lesser size.

A large wooden shelf also lingered near the window—beside it to be precise—and it was filled with the herbs which covered the air with their heavy scent. Although they were not alone in the shelf. There were also countless glasswares filling every inch, none which Elmer knew of beside the vials stacked together in their stand.

But despite all these weird instruments covering Elmer’s view, the one that made his face contort in curiosity the most was the large glass cage that lurked at the far end of the room, taking its height all the way to the ceiling.

Inside the cage was a bathtub, and thick long chains were rooted to the floor. Elmer wondered what they could possibly be for.

“Tenant,” his landlord’s voice came into his ears, and he pulled his thoughts and eyes away from the glass cage, putting them down upon the short plump man with a pale face and thinning pepper hair, standing before him dressed in a cheap gray shirt and an unbuttoned vest. So this was what he looked like. “Here.” The man stretched a paper at him, his hands thick and dirty with hair.

“What’s this?” Elmer asked as he took hold of the paper and read through it.

A fully bloomed Datura flower, shedded skin of a leopard gecko, a petal of each specie of the morning glory flower, a pair of owl eyes, five capsules of a poppy, the heart of a snake, the deepest root of an oak tree, tongue of a toad, eight webs of an octopus, ground quill of a dove, chrysalis of a newly transformed butterfly…

What are all these crazy things…?

His landlord turned around and wobbled toward the chair and small round table in the center of the room. “The ingredients.” He waved a hand from behind his head before taking a seat.

Elmer forcefully cleared his throat. “Ingredients?” He was confused. “Why are you giving me the list of ingredients?”

His landlord flipped a page of the small tome placed on the table before him. “Where’d ya keep ya ears when I said I didn’t want to make a’more elixirs, tenant? Buy ‘em ingredients and come back, I don’t have any ‘ere. And besides, ya won't have to pay me anymore if ya get ‘em ya’self.”

But wasn’t it better if he paid and the landlord got the ingredients himself?

Elmer dipped his fingers beneath his glasses and rubbed his eyes before waving his hands about in a mild frustration. “But I don’t know where to get them.”

“Well,” the landlord spat into his fingers and smeared them before picking up a quill, “ya the one who wants to become an Ascender, not I. Find ‘em or don’t, the second’s good for me.” The landlord suddenly froze and looked up at the ceiling, then he turned over on his chair to plant his wide brown eyes on Elmer with a grin. Surprisingly—in contrast to how dirty he was—his teeth were somewhat white. “I hope ya don’t find ‘em, then I won’t have to make any elixirs for ya.” He laughed and turned back to whatever he was doing.

Sly man…

Elmer ran a hand over his face with a sigh. Where was he going to even start from to find the ingredients? If only he had someone he could ask…

Where did she go? Elmer’s thoughts flew to Patsy, but he knew that she was well out of reach at the moment. There had to be some other way he could find these things—there had to be.

Elmers lips parted slightly as a jolt coursed through his body. He had an idea.

“I’ll be back. You wait here for me.” he muttered to the vile landlord, then turned around and left the room.

Share